Professor Edward Bostick and Vinton Melbourne work hand-in-glove to blend painting and quilting to showcase historically famous African Americans and to revive and mantain an art form that relates to the cultural legacy of southern African Americans.
During the month of February, African American History Month, Bostick’s quilts and Melbourne and Bostick’s pictorial quilts are on display at the 199 Chambers Street entrance and in the Breezway.
Bostick rejects the notion that the tradition of African American quilting was women’s work. Rather, he says, quilting can be seen as a tailoring craft and most likely had its origins with African American males who were slave tailors. In fact, it was the tailor, he said, who gathered up scraps of material from slave masters’ homes and used them to sew a genre of quilts known as “Scrap Quilt.”
“It takes anywhere from two weeks to three months for me to sew a quilt,” says Bostick, as he looks up at majestic quilts, the “Spider Quilt” and the “Wedding Ring.”
Melbourne, who said he always had an interest in and a talent in drawing, received a degree in Art, and worked in crayon in the first pictorial quilt that both he and Professor Bostick collaborated on together. The quilt was entered in a national contest and was of the famous but tragic Jazz songstress Billy Holiday. In fact, that quilt is traveling in an exhibition across the country.
For this year’s exhibition Professor Bostick has a wide variety of large quilts that originated from different designs in Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia. According to Bostick, “The quilts also reflect the role of sympathetic white Americans in the pre-civil War era. Hidden messages to slaves attempting to escape north to freedom were encoded in quilt symbols. The “Log Cabin’ quilts indicate safe houses for escaped slaves to hide in.”
Melbourne’s contribution to the pictorial quilts in the Breezway is a rather new take on quilting. Both Melbourne and Bostick decide on famous African Americans and Melbourne paints portraits on material, either with oil or even magic markers. Melbourne decides on the palette of colors used to paint the quilt portrait and Bostick carries that palette into his quilting of the portrait. This year some of the portraits are of: Jackie Robinson; Harriet Tubman; Louis Armstrong; Josephine Baker; Booker T. Washington; Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks; Ida B. Wills; Marion Anderson; Ma Rainey; and Malcolm X.
Both Bostick and Melbourne are readying themselves for next year’s exhibition, planning on twenty to thirty pictorial quilts and large traditional quilts. They both exude a real sense of camaraderie as well as their dedication to an art form, rarely seen.
